With this depravity were oddly allied gifts of mind and graces of
person, which, but for the handicap of vice, should have made Lord
Lyttelton one of the most eminent and useful men of his time. When he
was at Eton Dr Barnard, the headmaster, predicted a great future for the
boy, whose talents he declared were superior to those of young Fox. In
literature and art his natural endowment was such that he might easily
have won a leading place in either profession; while his gifts of
statemanship and his eloquent tongue might with equal ease have won fame
and high position in the arena of politics.

Shortly after he succeeded to his Barony he married the widow of Joseph
Peach, Governor of Calcutta, and for a time seems to have made an effort
to reform his ways; but the vice in his blood was quick to reassert
itself; he abandoned his wife under the spell of a barmaid's eyes, and
plunged again into the morass of depravity, in which alone he could find
the pleasure he loved.

Such was Lord Lyttelton at the time this story opens, when, although
still a young man (he was but thirty-five when he died), he was a
nervous and physical wreck, draining the last dregs of the cup of
pleasure.

And yet, how little he seems to have realised that he was near the end
of his tether the following story proves. One day in the last month of
his life a cousin and boon companion, Mr Fortescue, called on him at his
London home.

"He found," to quote the words of his lordship's
stepmother, "Lord Lyttelton in bed, though not ill; and
on his rallying him for it, Lord Lyttelton said: 'Well,
cousin, if you will wait in the next room a little while,
I will get up and go out with you.' He did so, and the
two young men walked out into the streets. In the course
of their walk they crossed the churchyard of St James's,
Piccadilly. Lord Lyttelton, pointing to the gravestones,
said: 'Now, look at these vulgar fellows; they die in
their youth at five-and-thirty. But you and I, who are
gentlemen, shall live to a good old age!'"

How little could he have anticipated that within a few days he, too,
would be lying among the "vulgar fellows" who die in their youth at
five-and-thirty!

And, indeed, there seemed little evidence of such a tragic possibility;
for the very next day he was charming the House of Lords with a speech
of singular eloquence and statesmanlike grasp--the speech of a man in
the p